BBC bosses might as well be replaced with Muppets – they're a national embarrassment and no longer promote honesty
In a world of fake news, I used to say it had the best journalists and highest standards.
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I thought it promoted Britain's values of democracy, honesty and fairness around the world. Not any more.
It has gone from the world's best broadcaster to a national embarrassment.
You might as well replace BBC bosses with the cast of the Muppet Show.
This week, it hit a new low. It had to finally admit it had paid the son of a Hamas official to star in a film about Gaza.
That broke the BBC's own rules, but Deborah Turness, the chief of BBC News, told staff there is a 'difference' between the terrorist group's political and military wings.
All of Hamas is proscribed.
You'd expect someone paid £430,000 to know this.
The BBC cannot be trusted to report on the war between Israel and Hamas.
Instead we get unbalanced coverage.
When it rushed to accuse Israel of bombing a hospital in Gaza, international editor Jeremy Bowen said it had been 'destroyed' and 'flattened'.
John Torode SACKED from MasterChef after 'racist remark' in another blow for scandal-hit show after Gregg Wallace saga
The hospital hadn't been hit at all.
This is not a theoretical debate about a conflict thousands of miles away.
The BBC's coverage has a terrible impact on people in the UK.
Constantly falsely accusing Israel of committing a genocide will fuel hatred towards people who identify with Israel, which is the vast majority of Jewish people.
And look what happened at Glastonbury, as the BBC broadcast a group chanting 'Death to the IDF'.
It has been three weeks, yet no one has been held responsible.
Sack Tim Davie
What needs to change?
Start by replacing Jeremy Bowen.
Close BBC Arabic which squanders taxpayers' money on content that barely differs from Qatar's propaganda channel Al-Jazeera.
And sack BBC staff guilty of glorifying terror online.
Deborah Turness needs to go and Tim Davie should follow if he can't take swift action to clear up the mess.
It seems the only people who get it are Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy and Ofcom boss Dame Melanie Dawes who said the public's trust is being undermined.
Nandy has already been in to read the riot act.
She was completely right to demand changes at the top because that's the only way this can be sorted out.
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Reuters
28 minutes ago
- Reuters
Israeli tanks kill 59 people in Gaza crowd trying to get food aid, medics say
CAIRO/GAZA, June 17 (Reuters) - (This June 17 story has been refiled to correct a misspelled word to 'tallies,' not 'allies,' in paragraph 17) Israeli tanks fired into a crowd trying to get aid from trucks in Gaza on Tuesday, killing at least 59 people, according to medics, in one of the bloodiest incidents yet in mounting violence as desperate residents struggle for food. Video shared on social media showed around a dozen mangled bodies lying in a street in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. The Israeli military, at war with Hamas-led Palestinian militants in Gaza since October 2023, acknowledged firing in the area and said it was looking into the incident. Witnesses interviewed by Reuters said Israeli tanks had launched at least two shells at a crowd of thousands who had gathered on the main eastern road through Khan Younis in the hope of obtaining food from aid trucks that use the route. "All of a sudden, they let us move forward and made everyone gather, and then shells started falling, tank shells," said Alaa, an eyewitness, interviewed by Reuters at Nasser Hospital, where wounded victims lay sprawled on the floor and in corridors due to the lack of space. "No one is looking at these people with mercy. The people are dying, they are being torn apart, to get food for their children. Look at these people, all these people are torn to get flour to feed their children." Palestinian medics said at least 59 people were killed and 221 wounded in the incident, at least 20 of them in critical condition. Casualties were being rushed into the hospital in civilian cars, rickshaws and donkey carts. It was the worst death toll in a single day since aid resumed in Gaza in May. In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces said: "Earlier today, a gathering was identified adjacent to an aid distribution truck that got stuck in the area of Khan Younis, and in proximity to IDF troops operating in the area. "The IDF is aware of reports regarding a number of injured individuals from IDF fire following the crowd's approach. The details of the incident are under review. The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and operates to minimise harm as much as possible to them while maintaining the safety of our troops." Medics said at least 14 other people were also killed by Israeli gunfire and airstrikes elsewhere in the densely populated enclave, taking Tuesday's overall death toll to at least 73. The health ministry said 397 Palestinians, among those trying to get food aid, had been killed and more than 3,000 were wounded since late May. The incident was the latest in nearly daily large-scale killings of Palestinians seeking aid in the three weeks since Israel partially lifted a total blockade on the territory it had imposed for nearly three months. Israel has been channelling much of the aid it is now allowing into Gaza through a new U.S.- and Israeli-backed group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which operates a handful of distribution sites in areas guarded by Israeli forces. "The incident in question did not occur at a GHF site, but rather near a United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) location," the foundation said of the incident on Tuesday. The United Nations rejects the GHF delivery system as inadequate, dangerous and a violation of humanitarian impartiality rules. Israel says it is needed to prevent Hamas fighters from diverting aid, which Hamas denies. Gaza authorities say hundreds of Palestinians have been killed trying to reach GHF sites. The GHF said in a press release late on Monday that it had distributed more than three million meals at its four distribution sites without incident. The Gaza war was triggered in October 2023, when Palestinian Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Israel's subsequent military assault on Gaza has killed nearly 55,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry, while displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million and causing a hunger crisis. Since last week, Gaza Palestinians have kept an eye on the new air war between Israel and Iran, which has long been a major supporter of Hamas. Gaza residents have circulated images of buildings in Israel wrecked by Iranian missiles, some saying they are happy to see Israelis experiencing a measure of the fear of airstrikes that they have endured for 20 months.
The Guardian
28 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Orgreave inquiry: Why now and what are the crucial questions it seeks to answer?
Ministers have announced an inquiry into the violent policing at Orgreave and the collapsed prosecutions of 95 miners accused of offences there, 41 years after the infamous scenes of 18 June 1984. Here we set out some key details about why the inquiry has been set up and the crucial questions it may seek to answer. The revival of campaigning about the Orgreave injustices developed after the Guardian published an article in April 2012 making the link between the South Yorkshire police operation in 1984 and a collapsed trial in 1985, and the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, in which 97 people were unlawfully killed. The same force, led by the same chief constable, Peter Wright, was responsible for the disaster, and orchestrated a false narrative to blame the victims. The BBC in Yorkshire then broadcast a documentary in October 2012, highlighting that dozens of police officers' statements alleging criminal behaviour by miners at Orgreave had the same opening paragraphs, apparently dictated to them by detectives. The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC) formed after that, and it has argued for 13 years that the injustices endure today and an inquiry is needed. Yvette Cooper began calling for an inquiry in 2015 when she was shadow home secretary, and Labour has pledged to hold an inquiry in every election manifesto since 2017. OTJC founding member Joe Rollin said they expect the inquiry to finally access all relevant documents, including some that have remained classified on grounds of national security. The overall police operational plan has never been made public. The National Union of Mineworkers has always believed the police attacks were pre-planned, kettling miners into a field and deploying strategically positioned mounted officers, dog handlers and units with short shields and truncheons. During the miners' strike police set up roadblocks across routes to mining areas to prevent people picketing, but many miners who were at Orgreave still talk with bewilderment about the police directing them into the site that day. No police officer has ever been held to account for the apparently dictated statements and false evidence that was used to charge 95 men with riot and unlawful assembly. All defendants were acquitted in July 1985 after a 48-day trial in which defence barristers repeatedly accused police officers in court of lying and fabricating evidence. A 2015 report by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (now the Independent Office for Police Conduct) said it found suggestions that senior South Yorkshire police officers later acknowledged there was evidence of perjury, and in effect covered it up. The IPCC referred to a note regarding the force's 1991 settlement of a civil claim, paying 39 miners £425,000 compensation but with no admission of liability. 'The note also raises further doubts about the ethical standards and complicity of officers high up in [South Yorkshire police],' the report said. The inquiry will be a panel of relevant experts, chaired by Pete Wilcox, the bishop of Sheffield. This builds on the pioneering Hillsborough Independent Panel (HIP), chaired by the then bishop of Liverpool, James Jones. Unlike that panel, the Orgreave inquiry will be statutory, which means it has powers to compel people to provide information. Wilcox will develop the terms of reference, format and panel membership in consultation with the Home Office. He said that he expects the panel to begin its work this autumn. After it emerged last month that Northumbria police had destroyed their documents relating to Orgreave, Cooper, now the home secretary, said she has written to all police forces believed to have relevant records, saying they must be preserved. The inquiry may follow the model of the HIP, which considered only documentary evidence and did not hold hearings where witnesses such as retired police officers would be questioned in person. It is presumed the Orgreave inquiry will produce a report that will seek to illuminate the full truth of the police operation and prosecutions. Campaigners also hope that it will help redress the broader historical narrative, the negative portrayal of the miners in large sections of the media, and prime minister Margaret Thatcher labelling them 'the enemy within', while her government fully supported the police. Given the four decades since these traumatic events of the 1980s, it appears unlikely anybody could be prosecuted, whatever the inquiry finds. But Cooper did not rule it out, saying she could not pre-empt the inquiry's findings, or any outcome.
The Guardian
28 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Government launches Orgreave inquiry, 40 years after clashes at miners' strike
More than four decades after the violent policing at Orgreave during the miners' strike and a failed prosecution criticised as a police 'frame up', the government has established a statutory inquiry into the scandal. The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced the inquiry having informed campaigners last Thursday at the site in South Yorkshire where the Orgreave coking plant was located. The inquiry into the policing on 18 June 1984 and the collapsed prosecutions marks the culmination of remarkable persistence by campaigners, who argue that the miners' strike remains an enduring source of injustice. The present-day focus on Orgreave developed after 2012, when the Guardian highlighted the violence and alleged manipulation of evidence afterwards by South Yorkshire police, and the fact that five years later the same force was responsible for the Hillsborough disaster, in which 97 people were unlawfully killed. Speaking to the Guardian at the Orgreave site, which has now been developed into an advanced manufacturing complex, retail estate, new homes and parkland, Cooper said: 'I think the miners' strike still has deep scars across coalfield communities, and the decisions made at that time – the broadest decisions that were taken by the Thatcher government in the 1980s – the scars can still be felt across the coalfields.' The Home Office said in its announcement that the criminal charges brought by South Yorkshire police against 95 miners were dropped 'after evidence was discredited'. The legacy of Orgreave has been to undermine 'the wider mining community's confidence in policing for decades,' it said. Cooper said that as an MP for a former mining area in West Yorkshire, she understood the community feeling. She made it clear that the inquiry would address the collapsed prosecutions as well as the policing on the day. 'People have waited for answers for over 40 years,' she said. 'The scale of the clashes, the injuries, the prosecutions, the discredited evidence, all of those things – there's still so many unanswered questions.' At Orgreave, about 8,000 miners assembled for a mass picket called by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), and were met by 6,000 police officers from forces nationwide, led by South Yorkshire police. The violence that ensued has become an infamous episode in British history, police charging on horseback and hitting miners over the head with truncheons. Some miners did throw stones before the police charge and retaliated after it, and the next day 28 officers were reported to have been injured. Official reports later put the figure at 72. The NUM, however, has always believed the police violence was pre-planned, and that the South Yorkshire force, and Margaret Thatcher herself, who described the Orgreave picketing as 'mob rule', greatly exaggerated the extent of miners' misbehaviour. The prosecution of 95 miners for the offences of riot and unlawful assembly collapsed on 17 July 1985 after their barristers repeatedly accused police officers of lying in their statements and in court. Michael Mansfield KC, who represented several defendants, said after their acquittals that it had been 'the biggest frame up ever'. The form of the Orgreave inquiry is modelled on the Hillsborough independent panel, whose 2012 report is recognised as a landmark, establishing crucial details about the disaster and overturning the false South Yorkshire police narrative that was intended to avoid responsibility and blame the victims. The inquiry, which will have the power to compel witnesses to testify, will be chaired by Pete Wilcox, the bishop of Sheffield, who has long regarded it as important for community healing. As dean of Liverpool from 2012 to 2017, Wilcox worked with James Jones, then the bishop of Liverpool, who chaired the Hillsborough panel. The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC), founded by strike veterans and activists in 2012, welcomed the announcement. Joe Rollin, a founder member, said he was 'cautiously elated' by the prospect of the inquiry. 'We've got a long way to go – and people know us, we're determined, and we'll not give up until we get the justice we deserve.' Arthur Critchlow, one of the miners prosecuted, suffered a fractured skull from a police truncheon blow at Orgreave. He was with the OTJC representatives who met Cooper, and said he lived with the trauma every day. 'It's a massive injustice. For the 48 days of that trial I was convinced I was going to get life in prison.' The inquiry announcement was fantastic, he said. 'I just hope the miners will be vindicated, and the majority of the country will realise that we weren't lying – the media were lying, and the police were lying. I just want the truth, for people to know what the police did, and who ordered it.' The NUM president, Chris Kitchen, said: 'We we are over the moon. We're hoping the inquiry will show that our dispute, which we believe was industrial, was political, orchestrated from No 10, or higher up the food chain towards No 10. 'And that the police were used as a parliamentary force to push a political objective, against working-class lads that were fighting for their jobs in this community and the industry. 'We never came to this field to cause a riot or to deliberately lame people. I don't think that was the same for the police, who came tooled up, with a plan to injure us, and to try and get the public perception on their side and end the strike.' A spokesperson for South Yorkshire police said: 'We will fully cooperate with the inquiry in a bid to help those affected find answers.'
